


cover story: from skeptic to believer

by prettyboyrollins



Series: all the songs 'verse [3]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Interviews, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25478956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyboyrollins/pseuds/prettyboyrollins
Summary: The exclusive scoop on all things Skeptics from lead singer Shane.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Series: all the songs 'verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569382
Comments: 21
Kudos: 55





	cover story: from skeptic to believer

**Author's Note:**

> [taps mic] yo, is this thing on?
> 
> hi. i've missed y'all. it's been a while, but what with everything it's been hard to find the energy to write. i sat down today to write a borderlands fic (bc i've rediscovered my love of video games in my time since i lost my job) and instead wrote this. i had no idea how much i missed this universe until i pumped this out in an hour.
> 
> thanks, as always, to yesi for the beta.
> 
> this takes place between the final chapter of atsis and the epilogue. spoilers abound for all the songs i sing (i wrote for you) - if you're here and you haven't read that, please do that first!

**From Skeptic to Believer: An Afternoon with Shane Madej**

By Freddie Ransome

I don’t know what I expected when I reached out to interview Shane Madej of the Skeptics, but it certainly wasn’t being told to meet him in a park. I  _ definitely _ didn’t expect him to ask for my coffee order, or to bring it with him while we sat and talked. But I was quick to figure out that nothing about Shane Madej is  _ quite _ what you’d expect.

He wore a faded old Chicago t-shirt — “I’ve had it for years, it’s one of my favorites” — and a pair of worn jeans, which most people would assume was par for the course for the singer. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t be allowed to go onstage in this. It’s all a little  _ too _ old. This shirt has some holes in it that aren’t meant to be trendy. I try to at least look a  _ little _ like a rock star when I’m performing.”

Interviewing white indie rock boys is always a risk; some of them are so self-absorbed the whole process feels like pulling teeth. But Shane was an exception from the moment he handed over my coffee exactly how I liked it, and with that, our conversation started and flowed in one of the most natural interviews I’ve ever had.

**FR: So. You kind of took the world by storm out of nowhere. How did that feel?**

**SM:** Uh, insane, honestly. We started as this band that played covers in a little bar that TJ’s aunt owned—we were just a bunch of college kids who were bored. Then we started writing our own stuff, and that ended up being really, really good for us—but I wanna be clear, we wouldn’t be here without a whole lot of people back home really supporting us and being our cheerleaders. Our number one fan—my best friend, Ryan Bergara—he lives out here and was a one man street team when it came to sharing our music.

**FR: It all started with word of mouth? Just from one person?**

**SM:** Well, no. Not just one person. Ryan was a huge part of it, sure — he recorded the basement demos that went up on Bandcamp and got the attention of producers, so we owe him — but it was also the friends we made that worked at the Innertown. It was friends that Ryan brought from his film crew that moved back here and shared the album. It was friends of  _ their _ friends that played it for  _ their _ friends, and so on and so forth. It was an exponential growth kind of thing.

**FR: A lot of artists say “we owe the fans everything” but it feels a little more organic here.**

**SM:** I hope it comes across that way, because we all mean it. We’re only here because people believed in us. We don’t want to let them down, y’know? 

**FR: What do you think letting them down would entail?**

**SM:** We never planned on starting out as a band that wrote all these sappy love songs. We started out writing goofy stuff for ourselves and no one else, but then TJ found himself writing love songs for his then-girlfriend. And then I found my muse. So.  _ (Laughs) _ I guess I’m just worried I’m letting people down when we have an album full of mostly love songs. We’ll release the other stuff too, I promise.

**FR: Let’s talk about your muse, actually.**

**SM:** First I wanna say that TJ didn’t break up with his then-girlfriend, they’re engaged now. Felt the need to clarify that before we moved on. She’s amazing, we all love her.

**FR: Thanks for the clarification. That’s really sweet, that you’re all so close and supportive.**

**SM:** People always seem surprised that we’ve been a band for about eleven years and we’re still just as close as we’ve ever been. I get it - being around the same guys all the time can be exhausting. But we’ve been on the road for about a year now and we’re not at each other’s throats. And we all love each other. Teej and his fiancee got engaged at a Skeptics show, actually! It’s a really cute story. I’ll let him tell it someday but we were all very happy for them.

**FR:** **_(Laughs)_ ** **Okay, so. Back onto the matter at hand. Your muse, Mr. Madej.**

**SM:** _(Groans)_ Okay, okay. What do you want to know?

**FR: What songs have they inspired? Let’s start there.**

**SM:** Oh, simple and easy, right off the bat.  _ (Laughs) _ Uh. They’ve inspired a lot. “Make You Mine” is the biggest one - I wrote that song months before I met them but it didn’t work. It was nothing more than a happy chorus and a melancholy bridge. And then… I met them at the Innertown, at the bar after a show, and we kept running into each other, and the rest of it just kind of came to me. 

**FR: You don’t write whole songs at once?**

**SM:** It depends on the song. Sometimes I don’t get the whole idea, so I have to write what I do have and shelve it until something fills it out. Sometimes it’s one of the other guys - Zack gave me the idea for the second verse of Make You Mine, actually—and sometimes it’s just something that happens at a later date. Other times, I write out a whole song in two days and we start practicing it right away. “Make You Mine” took some time.

**FR: That’s a pretty collaborative process. How’s the songwriting split, generally? You do most of it, right?**

**SM:** Yeah, it’s about a 70/30 split between me and TJ. I do about 70%, Teej does 30%. He’s not the songwriting type — those are his own words — but he’s amazing at filling in gaps in unfinished songs. Zack also writes — “Talk Too Much” and “Something Bigger Than This” were both by him! He doesn’t write much, but everything he does write is incredible. 

**FR: Make You Mine was a collaboration and a love song - are there any other songs that were collaborations?**

**SM:** Yeah! “Love Her” - the song we just released last week - that was me and Teej. He wrote the chorus, I wrote the verses. He had an idea for a love song about his wife, but it was just that incredibly catchy chorus. I helped out with the rest - really, it’s his chorus that shines.

**FR: Backtracking a little - I gotta know, does your partner know “Make You Mine” is about them?**

**SM:** Yeah. It was how I asked them out, actually. 

**FR: Now that’s some classic romance movie stuff right there.**

**SM:** Yeah. I’m just glad it worked and I didn’t look like a fool in front of the whole bar.  _ (Laughs) _

**FR: What other songs are written about this mysterious muse of yours?**

**SM:** “Million Bucks”. I wrote that about a month after I moved out here with them. We went to the beach one morning and they were talking about how I used to say I’d never really fit in Los Angeles, even if I moved there. I’m too midwestern. _(Laughs)_ But, uh. Looking at them in the sun, and the way they smiled? I realized that I was gonna be just fine if I had them with me. Life was getting so crazy, and things were ramping up, but they had kept me grounded. They still do.

**FR: Has that been hard? It had to be a huge adjustment, especially since everything happened so fast.**

**SM:** Not as hard as I thought it would be, honestly. We’ve got a really solid group of friends out here that’ve been in our lives since before we even had a song recorded. They keep our egos in check if they ever start getting out of line - Ryan, Curly, Andrew, Steven, Jen. We’re really lucky in the friends department.

**FR: It sounds like it. The support’s coming from all sides.**

**SM:** We’re surrounded by love and encouragement and a healthy dose of reality and it’s done wonders to keep a bunch of kids from the midwest sane in Los Angeles.

**FR: Now, your first full-length album,** **_Make Me a Believer_ ** **, drops in September. What was the process of making it like?**

**SM:** Shockingly? Not that hard. The hardest part was figuring out what songs to cut. Everything was already written. Just a few things needed to be recorded, and whenever we’re in the studio, we have a great time. Our producer — Maya Murillo, she’s a genius, we’d be lost without her — really keeps our spirits up and keeps us doing our best. She’s the secret seventh Skeptic.

**FR: Is the sixth your manager?**

**SM:** My partner, actually. And I’d tell you more, but they wanna stay out of the spotlight for right now. It’s a lot of pressure to get thrust into celebrity status just because your boyfriend’s in a band.

**FR: That’s completely understandable. Your fans are really passionate, so I bet it’d be an overwhelming amount of support overnight.**

**SM:** Absolutely. They like being able to come to concerts and stand in the crowd as a fan. When they decide they’re ready to be a public figure, we’ll let the world know. But that’s a choice for them to make.

**FR: I just have to ask, though, can we have any details about your partner at all? Nonspecific stuff, y’know. If they’re inspiring so much of your music, I feel like that’s relevant.**

**SM:** Yeah, of course. Uh. They’re a lot shorter than me, which is fun. They’re an avid believer in ghosts, which is hilarious, because our band is named after Agent Scully. 

**FR: So you’re a** **_skeptic_ ** **dating a believer in the supernatural?**

**SM:** Yeah, I am. It takes a  _ lot  _ of patience. They’re  _ very _ passionate about it all.  _ (Laughs)  _ I’m joking — it’s fun to tease them, sure, but I’m genuinely hopeful one day they’ll find some proof and show me I’m wrong. I’m not holding my breath, though. They’ll bring up all the things they’ve claimed to find when they read this, but none of it’s compelling. 

**FR: It sounds like your relationship is really solid. Thanks for letting me poke a little bit.** **  
** **SM:** I appreciate you not pushing, and I mean, I love talking about them. They’re great. I don’t know if they know, but I fully plan on marrying them someday. 

**FR: I hope that’s not a proposal!**

**SM:** No! No, no, it’s not. I’d do that right. But I don’t mind if they know that the intention is there. That’s healthy, right? No big surprises for either party? A proposal is a big thing to come out of nowhere. Communication, people. It’s important.

**FR: Alright. Anything we should know about the album before it comes out?**

**SM:** I think the most important thing I’d say is that we all decided to put a hidden track on there as an homage to some of our favorite albums growing up. It’s a silly song we recorded while goofing off with some free studio time we had, and it’s got all of our friends in it. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a good time and a little love song dedicated to where we started and where we ended up. We hope you enjoy it.

Make Me a Believer _ is out on Island Records on September 7th.  _

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think! i'm still checking comments even though i haven't been writing much. love y'all.


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